I've got a little list - and I'm keeping it

If the minutiae of the BBC doggedly batting away Freedom of Information requests bores you, look away now.

The BBC has had a bit of a root around in its drawers, and does, after all, have some information as a result of McKinsey's £600,000 fee for reviewing management structures. But it's still keeping it under wraps. One element of McKinsey's work was to survey 1,500 staff in August last year in what's been described as an Organisational Health Indication Survey.  HR Director of blessed memory (now 'disruptive' personnel expert) Lucy Adams was said to have asked for details of the 30 departments with the worst symptoms.

The Information Commissioner ruled in May that the BBC should hand the list over. Yesterday, using lawyerly logic that would make Gilbert & Sullivan purr, they played with the word "survey".

"We do not hold what could be described as a "survey" This is because the survey is a diagnostic tool that contains proprietary benchmarks and frameworks belonging to McKinsey & Company. The BBC has access to McKinsey & Company's benchmarking data which allows it to compare its scores to global and sector comparators. However, the BBC does not hold the raw data or a report as such, and would need to ask McKinsey & Company to produce a piece of work in order to provide you with the information you have asked for...

The limited amount of information we do hold includes high level benchmarking information, in draft form, relating to different divisions of the BBC. Although we do not consider this information falls within the scope of your request as it is currently framed, we consider that this information would be exempt from release if requested. This is primarily because disclosure would be likely to prejudice the commercial interests of the BBC and McKinsey & Company by revealing commercially sensitive information that could be used by competitors to gain a competitive advantage. This information is therefore likely to be exempt from release under section 43(2) of the Act (commercial interests)."